Cannes or Nice

The short answer

Cannes if you want a small town you can cross on foot, better beaches within reach and a quieter week. Nice if you want a city, museums, an old town that stays open late and a cheaper, shorter journey from the airport.

They are thirty to forty minutes apart by train and the trains run all day, so whichever you choose you will see the other. The question is only which one you want to come back to in the evening.

Size and feel

Nice is a city of about 350,000 people, with a proper centre, trams, a university and a life that has nothing to do with tourism. There is always something open and always somebody about.

Cannes has around 75,000 residents and the centre is perhaps twenty minutes across. It empties in February and fills past capacity for a fortnight in May. If you like knowing the baker by the second morning, Cannes. If you like being anonymous in a crowd, Nice.

The beaches

This one is not close. Nice’s beaches are pebble, the galets are large and hot, and you will want shoes. The Baie des Anges is beautiful to look at and uncomfortable to lie on.

Cannes has sand along the Croisette and the Plage du Midi, and twenty minutes offshore it has the Lérins islands, which are the best swimming on this stretch of coast by a distance. Nice has the better single beach in Coco Beach, east of the port, but Cannes wins the category.

Eating

Nice has the stronger food culture and its own cuisine: socca, pissaladière, petits farcis, pan bagnat. The Cours Saleya market and the lanes of the old town give you more good cheap meals per street than anywhere in Cannes.

Cannes has the better fine dining per head and a daily market at Forville that is arguably the best on the coast, but its mid-range is thinner and more tourist-facing, particularly along the Croisette. See where to eat in Cannes and where to eat in Nice.

Getting there, and getting around

Nice airport is the second busiest in France and sits at the western edge of Nice. Into Nice it is about twenty minutes and a few euros on the tram. Into Cannes it is about fifty minutes on the 210 bus, or a train from Nice-Ville.

Within each town, both are walkable. Nice adds trams and a far better late bus network. Cannes has a single train line, which is efficient and cheap but stops around midnight.

Day trips from each

From Cannes: the Lérins islands, Antibes, Mougins, Grasse, Théoule and the Esterel, Saint-Paul de Vence. The islands and the Esterel are the ones you cannot do as easily from Nice.

From Nice: Villefranche, Èze, Monaco, Menton and the Italian border, plus the whole Mercantour if you have a car. Nice is better placed for the east, Cannes for the west. Both reach the other’s territory on the same line.

Cost

Nice is cheaper almost across the board, outside its own peak weeks. Cannes is normal for most of the year and becomes extraordinary for four or five weeks: the Film Festival in May, Cannes Lions in June, the Yachting Festival in September and MIPIM in March. In those weeks Cannes accommodation can treble while Nice rises only modestly.

If your dates fall in one of those weeks and you are not there for the event, Nice is the economical choice and the train solves the rest.

Which to choose

Choose Cannes for a first Riviera holiday with swimming at its centre, for a quieter and more residential week, for the islands, or for anything at the Palais des Festivals.

Choose Nice for a city break, for museums and architecture, for a short trip where airport transfer time matters, for travelling without a car and reaching Monaco and Menton easily, or for a tighter budget.

Choose both, honestly, if you have ten days. They are different enough to be worth splitting, and the train between them costs less than a coffee on the Croisette.